the minister of intelligence and aatomic energy last week and he said to me if the assad regime falls it will be bad for the iranian regime. and he said "iran needs to lose this game in syria." so whether the israelis are correct or not, whether it will turn out that the devil they knew was better, they don't think so and they think that, in fact, iran will be less emboldened if they lose assad, their key arab ally in the region. >> ifill: is it fair to say, margaret, that whether we're talking about turkey's role or jordan's role, the u.s. role or israel's role, all of this circles back to iran? >> you know, it does, gwen, it really does. all these countries, one, are concerned about iranian influence in the region. two, are concerned about iran's nuclear weapons program and, three, some would say there's the sort of sunni/shiite divide which seems to become more and more a fault line in this arab and persian world. so it is very interesting that, for instance, as you know the israelis and the turks have not been getting along at all ever since the flotilla incident a couple of years
